Dr Whisson himself describes his Whisson Windmill as follows:

"The essential principle is that more wind is used for power than for water supply. In other words, the area of power turbines is greater than the area of turbines leading to water harvest. This is all made much easier by the invention of a new kind of wind turbine or 'windmill'. The amount of water available in the air is for all forseeable practical purposes unlimited. The bottom 1 kilometre (in the atmosphere) alone contains about 1.000,000,000,000,000 litres of water and that is turned over every few hours. The "Whisson Windmill" or Max Water From Air device will make it possible to get adequate water anywhere at any time, drought or no drought."

Too big to do anything about it?

To illustrate the impact on water supply and quality, and give one suggestion as to what anyone could do today - WITH OR WITHOUT WHISSON's WINDMILL - to help in a practical way, consider this:

The amount of water needed to produce one slice of bread is 40 liters.One apple? 70 liters.And one hamburger? A staggering 2.400 liters!!!(Source http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5625)

Uses Of Whisson Windmill

If water supply is unlimited (it isn’t of course, it’s continually being recycled), then is the sky the limit for potential uses of this system?

Maybe so.

Max has identified interesting uses for his Max Water From Air system.

"A special feature may be that installation in drying lakes and wetlands would restore these threatened ecosystems."

And he says:

"Isolated dry communities of course, where people must carry water in a pot on their heads to survive could be transformed, and our new little company is committed to providing some of the first units to such communities in need."

Further Work On Whisson Windmill

But Max has done further work since his first patents.

He says: "there are new provisional patents going through the patenting process. A new wind turbine has been invented as being more readily adaptable to cooling and condensation of water from air but as a spin-off it looks to be very suitable for "Distributed Energy Production" as a small-scale electricity generator."

Any disadvantages?

There's just one observation and an open question. All use of energy has consequences. The same with water.

Large windfarms for example have been shown to create an effect on local weather patterns. If large Whisson Windmills would extract water from air on a considerable scale then this may constitute an intervention in the natural cycle of rain production. Would cloud formation be affected?

Magical "solutions" are always attractive. Technology certainly has its place but its appropriate uses will always depend on human values, intelligence and discernment.

Discernment about our needs and wants. How we behave towards each other and our environments. And about which limits to accept and work within. "Reduce, Re-Use and Recycle" remains as relevant a mantra as ever.

And, I'm no engineer. I'm just hopeful about this idea emerging successfully from it's tests and into our lives.

One operates on Whisson's condensation principle. The other runs on salt! Yes indeed...

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